​ Why a memecoin nearly broke the Toncoin blockchain? 1st September TON blockchain went down twice within 36 hours due to an unexpected spike in transaction volumes driven by the sudden popularity of a new memecoin called DOGS. The heavy traffic caused by DOGS transactions overwhelmed the network, leading to concerns about the blockchain’s capacity to handle high volumes of activity and its overall stability. The TON blockchain recently faced two significant outages, both linked to the sudden release and popularity of the DOGS memecoin. The first disruption occurred on 27 August 2024, when block production halted at 23:00 UTC and did not resume until 05:30 UTC on 28 August, leading to a six-hour downtime. The second disruption began on 28 August 2024 at 19:19 UTC, lasting over four hours. Several validators were unable to clean the database of old transactions, which means they struggled to remove outdated transaction data effectively. The inability to clean up the database led to a loss of consensus among validators, as they couldn’t process new transactions correctly or maintain synchronized records of the blockchain’s state. The concept of execution isolation offers a more efficient solution to the problem. Instead of constantly communicating between different parts of the network (shards), execution isolation allows each part to handle its own transactions independently. This reduces the need for constant back-and-forth communication, which can slow things down when there’s a lot of activity. Appchains, also known as application-specific blockchains, take this idea even further. They are specialized blockchains designed for specific tasks or applications. By focusing on just one type of activity, appchains can manage traffic more effectively and avoid the issues that come from trying to do everything at once on a single network. Examples of appchains include Polkadot Parachains, Cosmos Zones, Near Protocol Sharded Chains, Polygon Supernets, and Avalanche Subnets.